'Cloud Atlas' a serious stretch

Maybe if you're 20 years old and high in your dorm room with your friends, the platitudes presented in "Cloud Atlas" might seem profound.

Anyone else in his or her right mind should recognize it for what it is: a bloated, pseudo-intellectual, self-indulgent slog through some notions that are really rather facile.

Ooh, we're all interconnected and our souls keep meeting up with each other over the centuries, regardless of race, gender or geography. We're individual drops of water but we're all part of the same ocean.

That is deep, man.

The A-list actors who comprise the cast play multiple parts across the various stories and in elaborate makeup that's often laughable.

Tom Hanks is a scheming doctor on a voyage across the South Pacific in 1849, a trash-talking novelist in present-day London and a peaceful goatherd who's part of a post-apocalyptic tribe in the 2300s. Halle Berry is a composer's white trophy wife in 1936 Scotland, an investigative reporter in 1973 San Francisco and a member of an elite society of prescients in the farthest future.

Hugh Grant is often the least recognizable of all beneath layers of prosthetics and goop: at one point, he's a vengeful old man; at another, he's the raging leader of a band of cannibals.

On the other end of the spectrum, the most engaging tale of all is set in the gleaming, futuristic city of Neo Seoul, a place of detailed, totalitarian precision built atop the remnants of a flood.